


Cloudburst

by EdenMiasma



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Future nsfw, Loss of Autonomy, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Post-War, Rehabilitation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-09-29 21:21:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17211176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdenMiasma/pseuds/EdenMiasma
Summary: The war is over, and not without great loss.Ben now must learn to cope with constantly needing someone, and Rey too must copewith always needing to be there.(a post-war, medical rehabilitation AU)





	1. Trickle

**Author's Note:**

> I talked with my great uncle about his rehabilitation after a severe accident and it got me thinking about some stuff..

You’d be a fool to think he’d go down without a fight, but there was nothing Rey wanted more than for Ben to go quiet, head lowered, and let fate guide him in peace. For their war to end without their blood shed, and that somehow she and Ben can come together in the end.

 

But no. He is a spectacle of rage, of loneliness, and heartbreaking desperation.

 

Even with the force of the First Order extinguished he faces down the Resistance as if an army were at his back. 

 

He is blind fury in singed swaths of black and charcoal, sabre gleaming its everlasting malice through the air with every swinging arc. Blaster bolts barely miss and leave gauges in his limbs, blisters of red that shone across exposed skin. With every few steps hes wounded again.

 

Rey demands a ceasefire, her scream echoed through the force in such powerful waves even ships stuttered in their weightlessness, and all were subject to obey her whims. 

 

She doesn't want to face him, but he’s still advancing, the stubborn fool, so she too will take to the dusty earth to reign him in.

 

Up close Rey can feel the tired sluggishness of  _ Kylo.  _ she watches as one foot drags somewhat behind him, or how his grip on his lightsaber is looser than normal in a trembling hand, or that behind him is a mile long trail of red.

 

_ Please just give up _ .

 

“Ben… It’s over” 

 

He releases a beastly howl before his limping gait sparks to life again, despite the pain that ripples up his left leg that she feels ghost up hers, he comes for her with teeth bared and sword blazing. 

 

* * *

 

There's something peculiar about the force when someone goes silent, even when right in front of that someone its like they are surrounded by a cloud of haze, nothing like the walls she was familiar with. There's nothing to hit against, nothing echoes, no sound whispers from behind it, its an all encompassing, smothering haze of silence.

 

Ben is trapped in there and she has no way to know if he’s ever getting out.

 

Rey sits before the bacta tank in her spare hours of the day now, while the galaxy repairs itself in the aftermath of their cataclysm, and Ben floats in serene unawareness to the world around him. 

 

He folds in on himself like a foetus in the womb, long gnarled limbs somehow forming soft curves in a shape that can almost be considered comfortable. It's the most exposed she’s seen him in a long, long time. 

 

He has more scars than she remembers and can tell he's intentionally let them heal to scar for some pointlessly  _ masculine _ reason. She’d roll her eyes if they weren't so heavy. All other wounds from his perilous battle have mostly closed and healed over now, save for some deeper cuts and his... 

 

“Has snow white awoken from his slumber yet?” Quipps the easygoing Poe Dameron as he saunters into the lowlit room, He too shows signs of exhaustion like everyone else in their fleet, but still he holds his air of playful charm she's only just gotten used to. Rey shakes her head, No, he hasn’t woken up yet, despite her continuous pleas from her side of the force.

 

Poe claps a hand on her shoulder. “Dont worry too much, im sure he’ll come back to you soon. The smell of bacta always pissed him off as a kid so he probably wants out”.

 

It is so beyond Rey how Poe can stay in his high spirits always, she's plagued with worries, what if he never wakes up? What if he has forgotten everything? What if he still tries to fight when he awakens? How will he react to…?

 

“The med droids ruled out brain damage but the bleeding was sill massive” Rey countered pessimistically. 

 

“You saw him out there, he won’t let a little blood stop him” 

 

“That wasn't  _ a little _ blood poe..”

 

“Same thing. He’ll be fine” 

 

As if Ben somehow knew he was being talked about, his leg weakly kicked back and knocked on the glass with a hollow thud, and for the briefest moment she felt something, a warmth, seep through the haze. 

 

It was all she was living off right now. Small movements, little vibrations in the force, like the heartbeat of his spiritual being to let her know he's still here. She didn't want food, didn't want water, she just wanted to know he could come back. 

 

Poe has to physically extract her from the medbay and its quickly accepted hes been sent to keep an eye on her this time instead of Finn. Given her position as a valuable asset she cant tire herself out keeping watch of a man dead to the world. 

 

Shes dragged to the mock cafeteria of their ship where the remnant handfuls of Resistance crew sit scattered at tables, talking loudly and being impossibly cheerful, the sound grated on her frayed nerves. 

 

“We’ll get you something to eat and put you to bed, got a big few days comin” Poe tells her. Yes, they will be relocating from their orbital position above some faceless planet to an old base that has been somewhat ‘rebuilt’ by a separate resistance faction. It will be nice to not be in such close quarters with everyone for once.

 

* * *

 

In her sleep she hears the whispers of things unspoken, and said aloud, that bounce across the invisible walls between all things living and dead. Rey hears the voice of mistrust, of reluctance, in her ability to lead the resistance in the wake of Leia’s passing, she is not strong enough, or too strong some say, she is inexperienced in leadership and could leave the Resistance in ruin.

 

She knows these doubts too well, she’s felt them all before, but it never makes it less painful to hear them.

 

Rey searches the depths of nothing for the quietest pocket of the force, where ben solo rests, and nestles herself between his ribs where only the sounds of his steady heartbeat can reach her.

 

* * *

 

Ordnat

 

One of the millions of unregistered planets just beyond the outer rim. It is near constantly overcast and rains eight ‘days’ in a row before resting for two and starting over again. 

Gravity was denser here, and most of the fauna were flabby amphibious creatures that consumed plantlife.

 

Rey doesn't know if she hates it or not, to barely catch a glimpse of the sun between the sheen of clouds, but the cool dewy feeling of rain on her skin is a lovely compromise. 

 

It is her duty now, at the behest of the late General Leia, to guide the Resistance in the path of the light, and as a secondary more grueling task, to protect Ben Solo from.. Well, himself.

 

Rey stands by the side of the medical droid escorts as they cart Bens unconscious body across the docking bay, she can feel the eyes on her back as Resistance members watch their downed enemy pass by. They know not to lay a finger on him, that Leia had just wanted her son to come home safe and sound and  _ sane _ , and they had to respect their General.

 

He no longer requires the Bacta tank, all wounds now closed and on the way to growing new skin tissue, some scarred regardless of the bacta, but overall his external healing was fast.

 

The droids fret over his positioning on the gurney, tiny metallic claws clasping at his limbs and working at his joints to exercise them and retain bloodflow after landing in a new environment.

 

“How are his vitals?” Rey asks the taller cylindrical droid, nicknamed ‘bart’ by Poe, the one with an artificial voice and a large decorative sticker of a speeder on its side. As it responds to her it works Bens right leg, rolling his ankle in slow clockwise motions.

 

“Heart rate: 45 BPM, Average. Blood pressure, Average for the patient in question. Lung capacity-”

 

Everything ticks off normal, he is in a rest state, and as healthy as a battered man can be.

 

“Brain activity picked up when we landed, Miss Rey”

 

_ That  _ was what she was listening for. 

 

“Is he going to wake up?”

 

“Undetermined, he shows signs of REM sleep currently, the patient is closer to consciousness than a coma”

 

_ mouthy thing aren’t you? _

 

She doesn’t know what that even means, REM, but it might have to do with how his eyelids flutter about now, and the twitch in his left lower lid she’s noticed when he is somewhat vexed. Hes awake-ish, but when Rey focuses into the force he is still surrounded by fog. Still unreachable. 

 

She will try again later.

 

The droid moves on to stretch out the tension in Ben’s right shoulder and she averts her eyes.

 

* * *

 

It’s a dreary storming night when something pierces through the veil of silence between the two. Like a bolt of lightning, loud, thunderous, and terrifying, a desperate cry like a lost child.   
  
“ _ REY!” _

 

She’s out of her cot and racing down the halls in a heartbeat, no, faster than that, because she feels the stuttered pulse of hear heart in her ears in its painful metronome with every heavy step she takes. He needs her, he's awake and he's scared and  _ he needs me. _

 

The door panel buckles under the weight of her palm, unceremoniously slammed against the scanner to give her access and the seconds tick past like molasses.  _ He needs me _ . Rey forces herself through the damned slow door and stumbles to the floor, palms now finding glass embedding deep into her flesh.  _ He needs me. _

 

The lights flicker on, and then off, and on again. Old technology. And before her she sees only the blurry haze of destruction leading to Ben, crumpled to the floor only a few paces from his overturned gurney.

 

_ He needs me. _

 

“ _ Ben _ ” she calls to him, voice strained from sleep. It catches his attention and their sights meet again, from the span of weeks that felt like years, and he's screaming for her comfort with those tired puppy eyes.

 

She leaves streaks of red on the tile as she scrambles up to him.  _ He needs me _ . His Left hand reaching, shaking, taking her wrist and dragging her body weakly towards him.  _ He needs me _ . Someone is panting, and sobbing, murmurs of unintelligible apologies, desperation, and fear. 

 

_ I so badly needed him.  _


	2. sleet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> O v O Nsfw happens next chapter sorry

It takes the effort of the Med Droids, Rey, and Poe to lift Bens body onto a new gurney bed. Hed drifted back into sleep, back into the impenetrable fog, after hours spent in Reys arms. Bart remarks it should have been impossible for him to have made the mess he did. 

 

Deep nerve and muscle damage, he shouldn't even be able to stand.

 

“there's some adrenaline left in his blood work, when he woke he must have had a surge of it that let him get up” Poe notes, looking at the flashing screen on the back of Barts head. The droid  _ boops _ frustratedly how “that makes no sense” and “force sensitive bodies are stupid”.

 

Rey picks at the bandages wrapping her hands now. Ben had shattered glass instruments in his confused state, along with damaging some medical equipment. She takes note to review the footage of the rooms surveillance when she gets the time to. 

 

“Did he notice the arm?” Poe asks aloud, and Rey’s teeth clench so hard it sounds like stepping on fresh crunchy snow. 

 

“No, i don’t think he did”

_ Why would you even ask me that? _

 

Poe seems obviously perturbed by the damage Ben had done in a short space of time, but nevertheless his demeanor of suave confidence still shines through. It makes something squirm in the depths of her mind. “At least we know he’s capable of waking up, maybe now your waiting at his bedside will be worth it”

 

“Youre acting like a jackass!” Rey bites back

 

The pilots brows shot up, mouth twitching a tad as that common smirk of his tries to keep itself in check. “What? I mean-”

 

“Just get out, Dameron. If you’re just here to insult me, and Ben,  _ get out _ ”

 

He raises his hands in a mock gesture of submission and stomps his way to the exit of the medbay, before departing with “Maybe if you got some more sleep instead of waiting for your boyfriend you wouldn’t be so crabby!”

 

Rey pulls the force in anger and slams the bay door shut behind him. 

 

* * *

 

 

Ben cant put a word to the sensation of waking up. One moment he feels weightless, and the next, he is as heavy as lead. A burning, like red hot lava in his veins, crawls up his right side and branches down through to his fingers. He comes back into the world screaming, like a newborn, frightening the med droids at his bedside to scramble back.

 

Flight or Fight.

 

Confusion and agony skitter the struggling synapses in his mind. _ Fight, all around you are threats.  _ To Ben’s immediate left the smaller droid beeps incessantly, parts of itself connect to his person in long black tendrils. 

 

He tears them off and out, electrode pads peeling from raw flesh and drip tubes leaving flecked bloody holes. A damned tube runs up through his nostrils down the back of his throat and the sensation of pulling it roughly forces him to gag.

 

“Please calm yourself!” another droid, taller, its arms are sharp and plentiful. It strays to the right of his cot.

 

Though his arm swings there's no weight to it, though he feels the tips of his fingers ache the space between him and the metallic medic is nowhere near bridged. His right arm ends just barely five inches from his shoulder, wrapped tight in off-color gauze.

 

It brings Ben to a halt and he can only stare. It was gone completely, surely this was no trickery of the mind, no warped force antics just to fuck with him. He can barely remember what he’d faced a few weeks prior, just preparing for war, watching his dwindling troops fall, and the immeasurable sense of stubborn resolve he felt at that point in time.

 

_ And now what am I? A cripple.  _ _   
_ __   
Many hadn’t let an amputation stop them. Not Luke, definitely not Vader. But he feels the crushing weight of his own failure like a black hole at the centre of his psyche.

 

And something pushes back, fright, confusion, anxiety, relief?  These were not his feelings, but they were familiar, like a tone only he could hear from the sweetest singing bird. All walls he’d once built around him were nothing but dust, and Rey was already digging into the sensitive exposed matter of his being.

 

_ I’m coming! Just wait, i’ll be there soon. Don’t worry, im here. _

 

He already felt so tired, but her heartbeat, rapid and urgent, resounded in the cavity of his chest and kept him somewhat alert while the droids fretted with him. The larger pushing him back down onto the bed despite his weakened protests, and the smaller re-attaching electrodes with a cautious arm. 

 

It was that continuous rhythm,  _ thud thud thud _ , that kept his thoughts linear and quiet. It makes Ben uncomfortable, how desperate and dependent the force has had the audacity to make him, so much that the faintest brush of her mind against his brought him peace of mind.

 

So he waits, unblinking, stubbornly unfeeling, till Rey is once again slamming her impatient palm on the scanner panel just outside the door. Her eagerness making his already strained heart stutter.

 

She bursts inside in a flurry, red faced and panting with smears of grease on a mechanics coverall shes tied haphazardly about her waist. She is as ethereal as ever, and clumsily put together at the same time. He hates it. 

 

And just as soon as she has entered, she is left stranded. Always one to act immediately on impulse and not think things through.

 

Rey has no idea what to do here.

 

The last time they’d been face to face Ben was a mess and barely remembers, and prior to that… he was trying to kill her, and she too was trying to kill him. She had lead the Resistance to him, decimated his armies,  _ took his arm _ .

 

He watches her line of sight trail from his face slowly to his right… stump, and they are both flooded with her guilt, and his shame. 

 

“Ben… How are you feeling?”

 

_ Don’t think about it, don’t mention the titan in the room. _

 

Ben’s first attempt at speaking comes out a hoarse cough, his vocal chords thoroughly abused and stressed from his variance of screaming to silence. He tries again, and his voice is painfully thick and slurred.

 

“Been better”

 

She is relieved he has the strength to talk, he vaguely feels her doubts, her assumptions he may have never woken up. She steps past the droids to his left side, the one still in tact, and gingerly holds onto his fingers and for a brief moment they both remember sitting across from each other above a fire, and the hesitant touch of fingertips and the feeling of finally belonging, like their misshapen pieces of this hellish puzzle finally found their places side by side.

 

It dawns on him that her shields are lowered completely, it comes across as something gentle and sorry, and he experiences her next realisation with her. That the hand he’d once caressed her with is now gone. 

 

For the first time in years he lets himself cry.

 

* * *

 

Much to Rey’s relief Ben doesnt go back into an unshakable sleep. His readings are different now, and what was once a cloud of thick fog is now clear and the watery outline of Ben takes shape when she reaches out to brush against him.

 

He’d cried himself out over a whole half hour that left Rey just as drained as he was, she felt everything from him, his rage, his anguish, his fear and guilt and loss, all amalgamated into an emotion she could only call suffering. And once he’d passed out again from the sheer weight of his exhausting feelings Rey too felt she should rest. 

 

Back in her own private quarters she tucks herself in a tight ball at the furthest edge of her mattress, she wanted to be as small as she feels now. She reaches out to Ben, and finds him still in such a solid form, if she focused hard enough she can find herself curled into his side where his arm once was.

 

She falls into the void with one thing on her mind. 

 

_ I did this to you _ .

 

* * *

 

It takes two weeks for Ben to hold down solid foods, but in the same frame of time he’d regained some control of his left arm. Now he can clench his fist, and hold lightweight objects for short periods of time, and despite his shaking hand he could write his name in near perfect cursive.

 

The med droids were ecstatic over his rate of recovery.

 

Until.

 

“When will you allow me to walk?”

 

Deep nerve and muscle damage. She remembers that. And without missing a beat or considering the fragility of human emotion Bart tells him.   
  
“Given the amount of damage to your spine and by extension, your nervous system, and legs, you have a 5% chance of walking, Sir”

Ben looks.... Concerningly ok. Save for a furrow in his brow, she feels not a single wave of emotion from him. He just hums an acknowledgment and continues his finger exercises.

 

* * *

 

Ben is a restless soul.

 

He’d be damned if he had to be bedridden for another damn day. But despite his questioning and demands the Med droids could not do much to help him, after all, his legs probably will never work again. The only other option would be an ambulant transport device that he can’t use on his own. 

 

So he waits.

 

The clock on the wall tells him in less than an hour Rey will be here. She’s made a habit of turning up around seven after working on mechanic repairs around the more dilapidated reaches of the base, usually tired but lying about her state, always sporting a new scratch to her hands or grease stain to her clothes. 

 

Practically on the dot Rey walks in, no longer abusing the ID scanner, and takes her seat at his bedside.

 

“How was therapy today?” she always asks and it's always the same answer. “Productive”

 

Sometimes she does nothing, sometimes she talks, it’s become evident she simply wishes to keep him company be it from guilt or the connection they share. Ben clears his throat to catch her attention as she begins to stare off to space, his eyes watching as the hair about her shoulders bounce with the speed of her head whipping towards him. 

 

“I have a proposition” He tells her.

 

Rey nodes, eyes wide and inquisitive and shining in the fluorescent lights like stars. 

 

“I am incapable of walking, we know this” Something tugs from inside his chest, her residual guilt that drags through him too through the force “however, I want to leave this room, I want to see where I am. Fuck, I haven't even seen my reflection in weeks” 

 

She gives him a submissive apology, but that was not what he is after.

 

Ben points to the ambulant chair, It had practically gathered dust from disuse. He’d hoped Rey would connect two and two together but she looks back at him with her brows furrowed. 

 

“I want you to assist me in… moving about, just for today. please” 

 

She seemed more than excited to do so.

 

The med droids helped lift and lower him into the device, like a chair but with hover capabilities on the underside. Two curled handles reach out from the backrest and a cracked screen to his right on the arm of the seat shining through an interface panel.  _ Of course it’s on the right. _

 

He thinks bitterly and watches as Rey seizes up momentarily before pacing behind him. She acts like she didn’t feel him, leaving him to assume she thinks he didn’t notice, hasn’t noticed how every time she remembers she’d dismembered him, crippled and wounded him, she reacts in ways he just cant ignore.

 

“Where do you want to go first then?” she asks him.

 

He ponders for a moment, he doesn’t even know where they are. “Wherever, anywhere but a sterile room”.

  
  
  
  


She takes him to many places, becoming animate and excitable to tell him of the many divets and rooms she’s been in, of the crawl spaces beneath the grating she walks on and in the ceiling above. Even the rooms that have been sealed up for reasons unknown.

 

Rey sneaks them into the cafeteria where she makes him a mug of Caf (which the droids will be quite upset once the learn of this) and hands him a flaky sweet pastry from a cooling unit. She perches on one of the countertops while she eats her own and reminisces to him the first and last time she was asked to help back in the kitchen, wherein she’d gotten too distracted ‘taste testing’ the sauce and was ejected immediately. 

 

Ben enjoys her stories. He spends all his time cooped up in the sterile bleached medical wing and has only interacted with Rey ever since he’d woken up, despite feeling the many lifesigns of other resistance members in the base. She got to do what he couldn’t, to interact with others, to come back with a new story every day, some funny, others sad, some annoying, but always something new.

 

He tries to think of something, anything, a story to pay her back. Nothing surfaces, the First Order was always so formal, strict, and intolerant of misbehavior and even accidents. He cant remember ever having something interesting to tell someone there.

 

The thought saddens him.  _ How many years were wasted.  _

 

Rey chirps up out of nowhere as shes licking the flaked pastry crust from her fingers “Do you want to see outside?”

  
  
  
  


This planet was strange. Rey pushes the ambulant chair towards the massive open doors of the docking bay and already he feels the rushing wind of a storm. It was raining heavily, lightning jumping between the deep grey clouds and the faintest glow of the red sun shining through them. 

 

“Its like this pretty much all week, The planet is always raining”

 

“What is it like out there?” Ben asks.

 

“well... “ she ponders “theres short trees and a lot of puddles” 

 

“And?”

 

“And frogs!”   
  
Short trees and puddles and frogs and a red sun. a weird ugly shell for a resistance base, but smart. No one would think to come here to terraform or mine, and given the terrible climate colonising it would be stupid. He mentally gives his kudos to whoever had established this base.

 

He wants to feel the rain on his skin. Wants to stand up and walk out, feel the water soak up to his ankles in these dreadful hospital grade sweats. After moments of longing Rey decides its unfortunately time to return him to the medical ward. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise nsfw next chapter and a longer chapter. i been suffering. what up


End file.
